Tamil Nadu looking at offshore wind farms

Chennai, Feb 4 (IANS) The finalisation of government policy on setting up offshore wind farms will be a welcome feature as Tamil Nadu is looking to generate 200 MW of electricity from offshore wind farm projects, said a top official of the Tamil Nadu Energy Development Agency (TEDA) here Wednesday.

Speaking at a renewable energy seminar held here Sudeep Jain, chairman and managing director, TEDA, said: "Several clearances have to be obtained from the central agencies to set up an offshore wind power project."

Jain said it will be good if the government finalises its policy on wind farms as Tamil Nadu is aiming to set up around 200 MW offshore wind power projects as per its Vision 2023 document.

Industry officials told IANS that the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had finalised the draft policy. The new BJP government is now studying the draft.

The two-day Renewable Energy to Tamil Nadu (RE2TN) seminar has been organised by German company iPlon.

Jain also said the state government is focusing on roof top solar systems and has installed such systems on 122,433 houses.

He said the government is in favour of distributed solar roof top systems as that would almost cut out any transmission and distribution losses.

On the utilisation of land in wind farms for setting up solar power projects S. Gomathinayagam, executive director, National Institute of Wind Energy (NIWE), said a pilot project is being attempted by the institute at its wind farm in Tamil Nadu.

"The technical challenges are to be studied first. The power generation cannot exceed the infrastructure capacity set up for evacuating power from the wind farm," he told IANS.

Earlier inaugurating the seminar Achim Fabig, consul general of Germany, said his country is the sixth largest investor in India.

He said there are around 1,500 German companies in India.

Fabig added that Germany can share with India its expertise in the field of renewable energy.